Sunday, September 3, 2017

North Korea's Threat with a Hydrogen Bomb - How Destructive are They? & What are They?

What is a hydrogen bomb? A look at the latest potential threat from North Korea

North Korea's announcement on Sunday that it has successfully tested a
hydrogen bomb meant to be loaded onto an intercontinental ballistic
missile has raised alarm bells across the world, in part because of the
weapon's destructive power.

Here's a look at what a hydrogen bomb is, and what exactly it can do:

Stronger than the atomic bombs used during WWII

Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), a federally funded research and development center focused on national security
issues, suggests that thermonuclear weapons, including so-called
hydrogen bombs, are more powerful than atomic weapons, like the ones the
United States used on Japan during World War II, killing hundreds of thousands of people.

Atomic bombs produce energy through "fission, or the splitting of heavy
nuclei into smaller units, releasing energy," according to LANL.

Thermonuclear
weapons use a fission bomb to start "a fusion reaction where light
nuclei, with few protons and neutrons, join together and release
energy," according to LANL. This represents the same reaction that
powers stars, LANL notes.

When
a newsreader for North Korean state-run television announced today's
test, she called it a "complete success," adding that the "two-stage
thermonuclear weapon" had "unprecedented" strength.

Mankind tested hydrogen bombs, but not used them in war

The U.S. first ran a test of its own hydrogen bomb at Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands on November 1, 1952, during a mission called Operation Ivy.

"The
Atomic Energy Commission announced tonight ‘satisfactory’ experiments
in hydrogen weapon research … In a three-paragraph announcement, the
Commission did not go so far as to state that a full-scale hydrogen bomb
had been detonated, but it did say ‘experiments contributing’ to
hydrogen bomb research had been completed,” the New York Times reported at the time.

Footage of the test shows the haunting and familiar "mushroom cloud" of smoke billowing outward into the sky in repeated waves.

The
test represented the next stage in development for weaponry, and an
escalation in potential damage: Nuclearweaponarchive.org, a website that
tracks the history
of atomic explosions, suggests that a blast created during Operation
Ivy was "considerably more powerful than all the high explosives used in
two World Wars put together."

A summary
produced by The History Channel suggests that the blast is
"approximately 1,000 times more powerful than conventional nuclear
devices" like the atomic bomb.

Responding to the threat posed by the U.S., the U.S.S.R. tested "Joe 4," a thermonuclear device, in August of 1953.

What is a Hydrogen Bomb?

Hydrogen bomb or H-bomb, weapon deriving a large portion of its energy from the nuclear fusion of hydrogen isotopes. In an atomic bomb,
uranium or plutonium is split into lighter elements that together weigh
less than the original atoms, the remainder of the mass appearing as
energy. Unlike this fission bomb, the hydrogen bomb functions by the
fusion, or joining together, of lighter elements into heavier elements.
The end product again weighs less than its components, the difference
once more appearing as energy. Because extremely high temperatures are
required in order to initiate fusion reactions, the hydrogen bomb is
also known as a thermonuclear bomb.

The first thermonuclear bomb was exploded in 1952 at Enewetak
by the United States, the second in 1953 by Russia (then the USSR).
Great Britain, France, and China have also exploded thermonuclear bombs,
and these five nations comprise the so-called nuclear club—nations that
have the capability to produce nuclear weapons and admit to maintaining
an inventory of them. The three smaller Soviet successor states that
inherited nuclear arsenals (Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus)
relinquished all nuclear warheads, which have been removed to Russia.
Several other nations either have tested thermonuclear devices or claim
to have the capability to produce them, but officially state that they
do not maintain a stockpile of such weapons; among these are India,
Israel, and Pakistan. South Africa's apartheid regime built six nuclear
bombs but dismantled them later.

The presumable structure of a
thermonuclear bomb is as follows: at its center is an atomic bomb;
surrounding it is a layer of lithium deuteride (a compound of lithium
and deuterium, the isotope of hydrogen with mass number 2); around it is
a tamper, a thick outer layer, frequently of fissionable material, that
holds the contents together in order to obtain a larger explosion.
Neutrons from the atomic explosion cause the lithium to fission into
helium, tritium (the isotope of hydrogen with mass number 3), and
energy. The atomic explosion also supplies the temperatures needed for
the subsequent fusion of deuterium with tritium, and of tritium with
tritium (50,000,000°C and 400,000,000°C, respectively). Enough neutrons
are produced in the fusion reactions to produce further fission in the
core and to initiate fission in the tamper.

Since the fusion reaction produces mostly neutrons and very little that is radioactive, the concept of a
"clean"
bomb has resulted: one having a small atomic trigger, a less fissionable tamper, and therefore less radioactive fallout. Carrying this progression further results in the neutron bomb,
which has a minimum trigger and a nonfissionable tamper; it produces
blast effects and a hail of lethal neutrons but almost no radioactive
fallout and little long-term contamination. This theoretically would
cause minimal physical damage to buildings and equipment but kill most
living things. Developed in 1958 by the United States and successfully
tested, a number of countries are believed to have included such weapons
in their nuclear arsenals; the United States built several hundred
neutron bombs in the 1980s but did not deploy them.

The theorized cobalt bomb
is, on the contrary, a radioactively
"dirty"
bomb having a cobalt tamper. Instead of generating additional
explosive force from fission of the uranium, the cobalt is transmuted
into cobalt-60, which has a half-life of 5.26 years and produces
energetic (and thus penetrating) gamma rays. The half-life of Co-60 is
just long enough so that airborne particles will settle and coat the
earth's surface before significant decay has occurred, thus making it
impractical to hide in shelters. This prompted physicist Leo Szilard to call it a
"doomsday device"
since it was capable of wiping out life on earth.

Like other
types of nuclear explosion, the explosion of a hydrogen bomb creates an
extremely hot zone near its center. In this zone, because of the high
temperature, nearly all of the matter present is vaporized to form a gas
at extremely high pressure. A sudden overpressure, i.e., a pressure far
in excess of atmospheric pressure, propagates away from the center of
the explosion as a shock wave, decreasing in strength as it travels. It
is this wave, containing most of the energy released, that is
responsible for the major part of the destructive mechanical effects of a
nuclear explosion. The details of shock wave propagation and its
effects vary depending on whether the burst is in the air, underwater,
or underground.

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